Strikingly beautiful Finnish art house 'horror' film about guilt, religion, sin and punishment, set in the 16th century, at the end of the Russian/Swedish war. It's full of atmosphere, symbolism, and unanswered questions. Two Swedish brothers/soldiers -- one intellectual, the other violent and borderline mad -- come to a strange town where they are confronted with eerie reminders of their sins, and of those they have killed in war. Slow paced, but not boring. However, the underlying ideas do get stretched a bit thin over time, and the occasional turn to horror clichés was a little disappointing given the generally high level of intelligence and originality. Still, interesting enough that I would give it another look now that I understand what its getting at, and gorgeous enough that I'll still enjoy it, even if I'm once again left with mixed feelings about some of the content. Mention also must be made of the arresting performance by Ville Virtanen as the violent Eerik, recalling Max Von Sydow in his prime.

Literally, this film sucked.It made no sense what so ever.........THe acting was OK, the pacing was OK, but the ending was just terrible.I got the whole idea of this 'cleansing sauna' in the middle of nowhere but the movie went off to space as far as I'm concerned, it lost me.It had potential to be great, but failed.so, it was boring...........tedious ................pretentious ......and definitely over rated.

It is a stylish gloomy film. But it is very boring film. Action occurs very slowly. Events are not present. Besides, the film contains too many anachronisms and historical errors.The uniform of soldiers, their ranks, a manner to speak and many other things does not correspond to time in which there is a film action.The sense of events also is not clear. Nevertheless, once it is possible to look. From the pleasant moments it is necessary to note good work of actors. Gloom of a film is well allocated thanks to excellent work of the camera man. This film can very much it will be pleasant to fans of gloomy mystical thrillers. My rating 4/10

The movie is beautifully done, with dark wet imagery and good acting. However, you either have to be Finnish to understand or I was too tired to get the message. All I could get was that for the Finns the sauna is a cultural heirloom, dating way before their christianizing, a place where they believed to wash their sins. Finns and their sins. Sorry, couldn't help it :) However, left long enough to rot, those sins become unattonable and even if you face them, it is pointless. I guess this is one of those life lessons that the Christian religion is desperately trying to hide from us.Anyway, as I said, great imagery and the feeling of desolation and burden of sin is almost palpable. I liked the characters as well, deep and sharp. However, it was a slow thing and never in the movie there was any "aha!" moment. One has to make an effort to watch the film and to understand it. Being Finnish probably helps, too.